Despite the inflation that keeps Cuban families suffocated, the regime began charging for some obituary services, many of them unavoidable for the mourners, such as the interprovincial and intermunicipal transfer of the deceased.
According to the measure, reported by the newspaper Escambrayof Sancti Spíritus, the government not only charges for the cremation of corpses and the transfer of the deceased to other provinces, but it will also charge some benefits, among them, those related to the transfer of the deceased between municipalities of the same province.
It is also anticipated collection of wakes at homefor which the funeral home would provide services related to the viewing and the family would pay based on the approved price schedule.
Points of sale will be enabled to offer remains, amphoras with better design and quality to store the ashes of the deceased in the crematorium, explained Yoel Aquiles Martínez, director of the Provincial Unit of Necrological Services of Sancti Spíritus.
Likewise, “other types of coffins, of a better design, would be offered for those who wish and can acquire them, which does not mean that the State will stop providing the one that until now has been kept free of charge”, and “the sale of fine flowers , which in Taguasco, for example, are already offered for the crown service at differentiated prices,” he added.
According to the official, the State will continue to guarantee the activity related to the transfer of deceased within the territory, the wake and burial”.
It will also guarantee “the delivery of a traditional coffin, the transfer from the home or hospital to the funeral home or chapel with the disposal of the hearse, the fuel for this activity and the arrangement of the corpse, and within these benefits, those that are They are related to the wake in the local authorized as such; but if the family member wants another type of service, such as carrying out the burial in another place, outside the municipality or province, then they would be charged for that,” he commented.
Collections have already begun in some provinces of the island, where it is expected that “the obituary services little by little they are self-financing”, the information indicates.
Prices for the services have not been disclosed.
The regime “promised” to use that money to “improve” the services that will continue to be provided free of charge; as he himself did when two years ago he inaugurated stores in Freely Convertible Currency to keep the stores in National Currency supplied, something that has not happened.
These measures are implemented despite the complaints from dozens of Cubans that the transfer of deaths from vehicle and fuel shortage. Dozens of families say that the painful process of burying a deceased person on the island has become humiliating.
Mourners recently had to push a hearse to the cemetery while the indignant daughters of the deceased shouted: “Daddy, you did not deserve this.”
